“People started
asking things like:
‘Who do I request
time off from?’ and
‘Who’s my direct
report?’ and ‘Who’s
on my team?’ And
they were frustrated
that I didn’t have
immediate answers.

It was hindering our
culture, and that
meant it was time
to change.”

—
kory StevenS

Co-founder and CEO,
Taft (consumer
products and services)

2018 RANK NO. 56

GRO W TH 4,795%

REVENUE $5.7 MILLION

h

“I started the Gold-man Sachs 10,000

Small Businesses
program, and it
stressed that we
had to work on our
business, not in it.

But that felt impossible! We’d schedule
strategy meetings,
and they’d get
crowded out by
tedious tasks. I’m a
control freak, but
as we grew, there
just weren’t enough
hours in the day.

We fnally reorged
into two teams,
with two managers
who report up to
the co-founders.”

—
BetSy mikeSell

Co-founder and CEO,
Beddy’s (consumer
products and services)

2018 RANK NO. 270

GROW TH 1,817%

REVENUE $4.8 MILLION

h

“Staff members
didn’t want to come
to me frst, but they
didn’t have anyone
else to go to when
a client requested
something out
of scope. So teams
were consistently
delivering more
work than we were
paid to do. Now
that we have a clear
hierarchy, people
aren’t grinding out
that extra work or
sweeping it under
the rug.”

—
ali grant

Founder and CEO,
Be Social
(advertising and
marketing)

2018 RANK NO. 542

GROW TH 926%

REVENUE $3.5 MILLION

Advice from the founders of America’s fastest-growing private companies.AS TOLD TO KATE ROCKWOOD

Rankings and data
are taken from the

2018 Inc. 5000:
Growth is calculated
from 2014 to 2017;

revenue is from 2017.

h

“When we didn’t have much staff, everyone naturallydid a bit of everything. We reached our breakingpoint during our busiest season last year, when I sawleadership handling customer calls. I realized I couldhire someone a lot less expensive for the small taskswhile those leaders helped grow the business—butonly if we gave people clear roles to own.”

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